As a much more powerful and influential Khanate than the Chagatai, the
Golden Horde is one of the better known of the Mongol empires, particularly
because of its effect on modern Russian history. For the purposes of this
tutorial, however, the Golden Horde is significant not because of its ties to
Russia, but to the Islamic world. This empire, like the Chagatai, was a product
of the division of power that followed the death of Genghis Khan in 1227, when
several of his relatives inherited their own regions to rule. Great Khan
Ogodei, Genghis Khan's son, ordered the invasion of Russia in 1236, which was
led by Ogodei's nephew, Batu. Russia at this time was not a unified state, but
rather a collection of principalities known as Rus.

Between 1236 and 1240, Batu led the invading Mongols through a series of
attacks on Russian cities, including Moscow and Kiev. By 1241 the Mongols had
reached Poland and Hungary, and they were planning an attack on Croatia when
Batu received word that Great Khan Ogodei had died back in Mongolia. Batu
immediately withdrew his army from Europe and retreated to the steppe region
north of the Black Sea, the home of the Islamic Volga Bulgars. Batu supported
his cousin, Mongke, in the struggle for the position of Great Khan against
several challengers, and after ten years, Mongke finally prevailed in 1251.
Batu was rewarded by the Great Khan for his support during the succession
struggle, and his empire enjoyed Mongke's patronage for the duration of his
reign. Batu built a capital, Sarai, on the Volga River, and he named his empire
the Golden Horde. The word "horde" is derived from the Turkic-Mongol
word, ordu, meaning "encampment." The Golden Horde became one
of the most powerful of Genghis Khan's successor states.

Batu was a shamanist, like most Mongols at this time, which meant
that he acknowledged the existence of one God, but he also viewed the sun,
moon, earth, and water as higher beings. Islam would not influence the Golden
Horde's rulers until after Batu's death in 1255. After the brief reigns of two
of Batu's sons, the Khanate passed to his brother, Berke, who took power in
1258. Berke was the first Muslim ruler of the Golden Horde, and although he was
unable to establish Islam as the Khanate's official religion, his faith caused
a serious rift to develop between him and his cousin, Hulegu, the Mongol ruler
of the Il-Khanate in Persia. As we will see later in this chapter, Hulegu's
army was responsible for the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, and
the murder of the caliph himself. For Hulegu, who was a shamanist with Buddhist
sympathies, the sacking of Baghdad was just another military conquest, but the
Muslim Berke, watching from Sarai, was appalled. The resulting animosity
between the two leaders led to several wars, the first to pit Mongol armies
against each other.

In addition to their religious differences, Berke and Hulegu fought over
control of the Caucasus Mountains, over which both leaders claimed
jurisdiction. So intense was the rivalry that Berke reportedly ordered the
troops he had loaned to Hulegu's army years earlier to defect to the Egyptian
Mamluk army following the sack of Baghdad. The Mamluks then won a decisive
victory over Hulegu in 1260. Additionally, Berke concluded a peace treaty with
the Mamluks in 1261, in order for the two groups to ally themselves against
Hulegu. It was the first alliance between a Mongol and non-Mongol state in
which both parties were equal.

Also around 1260, Berke removed the Great Khan Kublai's name from the Golden
Horde's coins. Kublai, Mongke's brother, had succeeded as Great Khan that year,
after a lengthy struggle with another brother, Arik-Boke. Hulegu had supported
Kublai's claim, while Berke supported Arik-Boke. Kublai's victory pushed Berke
and his Islamic faith further into isolation from his Mongol brethren. Removing
Kublai's name from the Golden Horde's coins was the ultimate repudiation of
allegiance to the Great Khan.

Berke died in 1267, only a year after Hulegu, and the feud between the
Golden Horde and the Il-Khans died down. Berke's immediate successors were not
Muslim, and thus they were not as hostile to Hulegu's successors, who also were
not Muslim. Still, the Golden Horde retained its isolation from the other
Mongol Khanates, and the cultural, linguistic, and religious influence of its
mostly Muslim Turkish population increasingly affected the Golden Horde's
Mongol leaders. By the end of the 13th century, Turkish had virtually replaced
Mongol as the language of administration, and in 1313, with the ascension of a
Muslim, Ozbeg, to the Khanate, Islam became the official religion of the Golden
Horde.

By assimilating into the Islamic Turkish culture of the south, rather than
the Christian Russian culture of the north, the Golden Horde set itself up for
its eventual collapse at the hands of the increasingly powerful Russian
principalities. While the Golden Horde lasted longer than many other Khanates,
by the mid-14th century it began to fall apart. The increasingly powerful
territories of Moscow and Lithuania began absorbing pieces of the
disintegrating Golden Horde, while the invasion of Timur's army in the late
14th century added to the destruction.

By the mid-15th century, separate
Khanates were established in Kazan, Astrakhan, and the Crimea. The Russian
tsar, Ivan the Terrible, annexed Kazan and Astrakhan in 1552 and 1554, while
Crimea survived under the protection of the Ottoman Empire until 1783, when
Catherine the Great annexed it to the Russian Empire. The Islamic Tatars of the
Golden Horde, as Europeans have historically called the Mongols, survive today
in small population groups, primarily in southern Russia.